About this dataset

Because carbon dioxide gas helps to warm our world, scientists want to better understand where carbon dioxide comes from and where it goes. Plants play an important role in the movements of carbon dioxide throughout Earth's environment. Living plants both take in carbon dioxide from the air and put out carbon dioxide to the air. So scientists use satellites to measure the difference between how much carbon dioxide is taken in by plants compared to how much is put out by them. This difference is total amount of carbon dioxide taken in by plants, called net primary productivity. The maps here show plants' net primary productivity for the whole globe.

November 2016

What do the colors mean?

The colors on these maps indicate how fast carbon was taken in for every square meter of land for the time span indicated. Values range from -1.0 grams of carbon per square meter per day (tan) to 6.5 grams per square meter per day (dark green). A negative value means decomposition or respiration overpowered carbon absorption; more carbon was released to the atmosphere than the plants took in.